Climate Change Negotiations

As the Kyoto Protocol limps along without the participation of the US and Australia, on-going climate negotiations are plagued by competing national and business interests that are creating stumbling blocks to success. Climate Change Negotiations: A Guide to Resolving Disputes and Facilitating Multilateral Cooperation asks how these persistent obstacles can be down-scaled, approaching them from five professional perspectives: a top policy-maker, a senior negotiator, a leading scientist, an international lawyer, and a sociologist who is observing the process. The authors identify the major problems, including great power strategies (the EU, the US and Russia), leadership, the role of NGOs, capacity and knowledge-building, airline industry emissions, insurance and risk transfer instruments, problems of cost benefit analysis, the IPCC in the post-Kyoto situation, and verification and institutional design. A new key concept is introduced: strategic facilitation. 'Strategic facilitation' has a long time frame, a forward-looking orientation and aims to support the overall negotiation process rather than individual actors. This book is aimed at academics, university students and practitioners who are directly or indirectly engaged in the international climate negotiation as policy makers, diplomats or experts.

This edited volume provides both a broad overview of cooperation patterns in the UNFCCC climate change negotiations and an in-depth analysis of specific coalitions and their relations. Over the course of three parts, this book maps out and takes stock of patterns of cooperation in the climate change negotiations since their inception in 1995. In Part I, the authors focus on the evolution of coalitions over time, examining why these emerged and how they function. Part II drills deeper into a set of coalitions, particularly "new" political groups that have emerged in the last rounds of negotiations around the Copenhagen Accord and the Paris Agreement. Finally, Part III explores common themes and open questions in coalition research, and provides a comprehensive overview of coalitions in the climate change negotiations. By taking a broad approach to the study of coalitions in the climate change negotiations, this volume is an essential reference source for researchers, students, and negotiators with an interest in the dynamics of climate negotiations.

This edited volume provides both a broad overview of cooperation patterns in the UNFCCC climate change negotiations and an in-depth analysis of specific coalitions and their relations. Over the course of three parts, this book maps out and takes stock of patterns of cooperation in the climate change negotiations since their inception in 1995. In Part I, the authors focus on the evolution of coalitions over time, examining why these emerged and how they function. Part II drills deeper into a set of coalitions, particularly "new" political groups that have emerged in the last rounds of negotiations around the Copenhagen Accord and the Paris Agreement. Finally, Part III explores common themes and open questions in coalition research, and provides a comprehensive overview of coalitions in the climate change negotiations. By taking a broad approach to the study of coalitions in the climate change negotiations, this volume is an essential reference source for researchers, students, and negotiators with an interest in the dynamics of climate negotiations.

The Politics of Climate Change Negotiations describes the successes and failures of long international negotiations and most importantly, examines the lessons they hold for the future. Drawing on more than 100 interviews with climate change insiders in

Climate change negotiations have failed the world. Despite more than thirty years of high-level, global talks on climate change, we are still seeing carbon emissions rise dramatically. This edited volume, comprising leading and emerging scholars and climate activists from around the world, takes a critical look at what has gone wrong and what is to be done to create more decisive action. Composed of twenty-eight essays—a combination of new and republished texts—the anthology is organised around seven main themes: paradigms; what counts?; extraction; dispatches from a climate change frontline country; governance; finance; and action(s). Through this multifaceted approach, the contributors ask pressing questions about how we conceptualise and respond to the climate crisis, providing both ‘big picture’ perspectives and more focussed case studies. This unique and extensive collection will be of great value to environmental and social scientists alike, as well as to the general reader interested in understanding current views on the climate crisis.

The basic assumption of this book is that the organization of a negotiation process matters.The global negotiations on climate change involve over 180 countries and innumerable observers and other participants, addressing enormously complex and economically vital issues with conflicting agendas. For the UN to create an effective and well-supported international regime has required enormous and very skilful organization: factors such as the role of the Chair, the choice of negotiating arenas, the rules for the conduct of business and the approach of negotiating texts are usually taken for granted, and rarely attract attention until something goes wrong.This book explores how the negotiations were organized to produce the Kyoto Protocol to the Climate Change Convention and the subsequent Bonn Agreements and Marrakesh Accords. The author draws out the lessons and implications for other intricate and far-reaching negotiations, not all of which have succeeded so far, such as the WTO trade negotiations at Seattle and Cancun.This is essential reading for all participants in and organizers of international negotiations; and for researchers and students of international relations, climate change and environmental studies.

The EU has been portrayed as a leader in international climate change negotiations. Its role in the development of the climate change regime, as well as the adoption of novel policy instruments such as the EU Emissions Trading Scheme in 2005, are frequently put forward as indicative of a determination to push the international climate agenda forward. However, there are numerous instances where the EU has failed to achieve its climate change objectives (e.g. the 2009 Copenhagen Conference of the Parties). It is therefore important to examine the reasons behind these failures. This book explores in detail the involvement of the EU in international climate talks from the late 1980s to the present, focusing in particular on the negotiations leading up to Copenhagen. This conference witnessed the demise of the top-down approach in climate change policy and dealt a serious blow to the EU’s leadership ambitions. This book explores the extent to which negotiation theory could help with better comprehending the obstacles that prevented the EU from getting more out of the climate negotiation process. It is argued that looking at the role played by problematic strategic planning could prove highly instructive in light of the Paris Agreement. This broad historical perspective of the EU’s negotiations in international climate policy is an important resource to scholars of environmental and European politics, policy, law and governance.